1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to applications within computing systems. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and an apparatus to facilitate interaction management between loosely coupled applications.
2. Related Art
The future of business computing applications assumes the ability to perform interactions where computing applications are able to communicate with other computing applications over a long period of time, without limiting resources, and while surviving temporary system faults.
Each computing application, when communicating with another computing application, exists as a peer. As peers, a computing application may choose to ignore a request, or may choose to execute one or more functions on Either computing application can make requests to the other application but cannot require submission by the peer and cannot assume control of the resources owned by the peer.
Inter-peer communication can include request/response interaction between objects and one-way asynchronous information distribution. Request/response interactions can require long periods of time, possibly days, to complete and one-way asynchronous information distribution requires reliable delivery. Failures of these inter-peer communications, including temporary failures such as lost packets on a network, can lead to inconsistencies within the applications and to non-recoverable applications.
Long-running computing applications that block execution or lock resources for extended periods of time are detrimental to system performance and throughput. Additionally, each computing application may require knowledge of the interface to multiple peer computing applications. In some cases, adding new peer computing applications can require changes in existing applications.
What is needed is a method and an apparatus that facilitates interaction management between loosely coupled applications, which do not exhibit the problems described above.